With ever growing amount of smart handheld users, comes the ever growing amount of client applications, comprising those with keep-alive features.
According to some data analysis, in a 24-hour time period, a keep-alive application set to poll for updates every 5 minutes will generate 298 connection attempts. Daily connection attempts for popular keep-alive applications, for example, for Yahoo Email are 240 attempts, for Twitter are 90 attempts, for ESPN are 130 attempts, for Facebook are 125 attempts, and for Yahoo IM are 360 attempts. If a keep-alive application requests access to the network while the device is dormant it might take up to 30 signaling events for the radio to switch from idle to a state where data can be exchanged. Take one of the most popular smart handheld systems for example, android users have an average of 35 applications, and there are more than 300 million Android smart phones worldwide. The chattiest applications can generate upwards of 2400 network signaling events per hour, most of the time without user knowledge. This could amount to up to 25,200,000,000,000 signaling events per hour worldwide! Then impact on handheld users could be stolen bandwidth of 212 Mb/month/user and may cause sluggish wireless network or even no network connection, and the users may not make calls or connect to applications.
This background activity from chatty mobile applications creates congestion which can lead to network flooding where the wireless network is overwhelmed with constant requests to connect. Wireless carriers experience increased costs as they are forced to increase wireless network capacity in response to this. Further, individual subscribers experience lower service levels and shorter battery life.
One solution to address this problem is to apply traffic optimization software on the client to relieve network congestion by significantly reducing mobile signaling and bandwidth consumption. The software manages the exchange of control information and content between mobile devices and the network, using a client-based virtualized proxy and caching technology. It analyzes mobile application data requests, transparently detecting redundant traffic patterns and caching the results of unnecessary requests on the client. An Open Channel server polls for updates, so that the client connects to the network only when updates are available. On-device caching reduces unnecessary data traffic. However, such a solution requires the software to be installed on all the smart phones, which is unfeasible.